Easterseals Early Learning Center Garden

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The Easterseals Early Learning Center had been in touch with SWIMGA over several years to try and get a garden project off the ground. By August 2020 the project had been approved, with the goal for the first year to bring the garden into a state of safety and a clean slate for planting in the spring of 2021. It was overrun with weeds and overgrown limbs and lacking the proper fencing for child safety. As Easterseals has a good relationship with The Home Depot, they agreed to supply a number of donations.

ELC is a daycare facility, but they also provide rehab services for children infants to five years old. The garden would be safe and inclusive for all the children’s ability and mobility. The plans were to plant a full sensory garden to include vegetables that could be eaten straight from the garden as well as a pollinator garden, with a special request for sunflowers! Weather dependent, each class would get to spend time in the garden multiple times per week — helping maintain the beds, watering the plants, and finally eating the fruits of their labor. Educational programs will teach the children more about the plants they are growing.

The educational programs started in July 2021. SWIMGA volunteers met with 4 and 5-year-old students to experience a variety of topics. The first topic was bees – including raising them as well as a tasting evaluation where the children compared real Honey with fake honey. In the second program, MG volunteers helped students plant zinnia seeds to take home and introduced vermicomposting to the children. The third session included the lifecycle of the butterfly, and everyone had fun watching actors pretend to be butterflies.

During the fourth lesson, the children made earth bracelets with colored beads representing different aspects of the ecosystem. They took home their bracelets to remind themselves of everything they had experienced from planting seeds, watching the plants grow, to seeing insects pollinating flowers. It was a delight to spend time with the children in the classroom and the garden watching them play and grow. The last session at the Center was a dramatization of the “Three Sisters.”

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